Every day we have a lot of choices on where to purchase our goods and services. With the state of New York passing more and more costs down to our counties, and the governor and legislature showing little fortitude to do anything about it, we can help control some of our fiscal future here in Madison County.
Our county is made up of a lot of bedroom communities. Many people live here and work in Syracuse, Rome and Utica. I've had this discussion with my wife before on buying just the simple things locally, like filling up the gas tank in Chittenango instead of East Syracuse on her way to and from work and the impact it makes on our property taxes.
For example. My wife spends about $3600 a year in gas for her vehicle. At today's prices that's somewhere between 900 and 1000 gallons of gas. At $3.78 a gallon there is about 28 cents of state and local sales tax per gallon, 14 cents of the going directly to our local governments in sales tax revenue. If my wife buys all of her gas in Madison County that is $140 in sales tax revenue over the course of the year for local governments. Multiply that by the 25,000 or more people who work outside of the county but who live here. That comes to $3.5 million dollars that may or may not be going to support the local services we enjoy here in Madison County. You see, you have the choice on where you spend your tax dollars and the programs that eventually those dollars support.
So think about it a bit this year when you are looking over your county tax bills. How much tax money are you giving to other counties, that by spending it here, you could reduce your property taxes or at the very least help maintain the high levels of service we enjoy?




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